Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2)

MURDER 42

A Sarah King Thriller

VICTOR METHOS

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

―
Henry Ward Beecher

1

The rifle felt heavy in his hands.

Sergeant Glenn Wicker looked back at the other members of his team. Dressed in dark gray from head to toe, the Scottsdale SWAT team was the best Wicker had ever worked with. The incident commander had called them out in the middle of the night based on a warrant to be served, and not a single man made an excuse. They all showed up ready to work.

The suspect, Virgil Mendoza, was inside the one-story home. SWAT had every entrance covered. A no-knock warrant had been issued, and Wicker’s heart raced as he approached the front door. Another officer had the battering ram ready and waiting there, and Wicker gave him the green light.

“Scottsdale PD, search warrant!” the officer shouted before slamming the metal ram through the flimsy wooden door.

Splinters of wood flew in every direction as SWAT officers poured in. Wicker knew the layout of the home from the blueprints they’d studied in roll call. He banked left, into a bedroom, and swung his rifle left and right. Another officer had his back and checked under the bed and inside the closet. Wicker was about to turn away when he saw something.

A step stool was next to a dresser. Directly above the step stool and on the ceiling was what looked like a panel with a short piece of cord attached to it.

“Hicks,” Wicker said, gesturing with his chin to the panel.

“On it.”

Wicker lifted the rifle as Hicks cautiously climbed the step stool. He reached up and touched the cord, waiting a moment before he violently pulled it down and then jumped off the stool, lifting his rifle in the same motion.

“SPD, come out now, or we start firing!”

A long moment of silence before a nasally voice from the attic said, “I’m here. I don’t want to get shot. I’m here.”

“Put your hands through the opening now. If you move too fast I’m going to open fire. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Shuffling crossed the ceiling, and then two pale, hairless hands thrust out of the opening. Hicks pulled out a set of steel cuffs and slapped them on the wrists of the man, yanking him down ferociously. Wicker helped catch him before he slammed his head into the floor.

Virgil Mendoza was skinny and hadn’t shaved in a while. He looked like someone Wicker might see at a grocery store or in church, not someone with a million-dollar warrant out for possession and distribution of child pornography.

They leaned him against the wall and shouted for the incident commander.

The house had settled down after they’d found Mendoza. Once the home was clear, they could begin the search of the computers, which would be taken into possession and analyzed for months by the IT forensic techs. Wicker had once seen them find a video that had been deleted and scrubbed from a computer in less than a minute. They were also the best he’d ever worked with. When he’d moved from Cheyenne to join the Scottsdale Police, he had heard rumors about the goings-on in the department—racism, beatings, corruption, even murder.

The largest police corruption scandal in Arizona’s history had occurred in the eighties. He’d been apprehensive, but he knew he wanted to be in a bigger city than Cheyenne. Wyoming could only give him so much.

In his experience, though, every department was nothing but topnotch professionals. They had to be, because the level of daily crime for a city this size they dealt with was beyond what Wicker thought possible. Since the cartels had moved in, it was Armageddon.

Several detectives were searching the house. Wicker’s job was done. He wandered through, more out of curiosity than anything, and received a few pats on the back. The home was completely normal, with one exception: children’s toys. Toys were stacked on the bookshelves, scattered across the floors, on the couches, and crammed into the cupboards in the kitchen. He didn’t understand it, and he didn’t want to.

No one had been in the pantry off the side of the kitchen yet. It was no bigger than a closet, with a television on the wall and a recliner across from it. Wicker stepped in, noting how quiet it was. On the wall beside the door was a rack covered in a leather drape. Wicker removed the drape and grinned.

DVDs. Hundreds of them with amateur labels. He had no doubt they’d found what they’d come for.

“Detective,” he shouted, “better see this.”

A large man in glasses waddled over. He smiled when he saw the collection. “Gotcha, you fucker.”

Wicker scanned the titles written in black marker on the DVDs—descriptions of children and what he guessed were their ages. “Blonde 8” or “Tall 6.” His stomach churned just thinking about it. He couldn’t even imagine having to watch these, as the Sex Crimes detectives were going to have to.

“What’s that one?” the detective said.

Wicker had spotted it, too.
Murder 42
. The detective pulled some latex gloves out of his pocket and snapped them on. He grabbed the DVD and slipped it into a player on the floor below the television.

Wicker wanted to leave but couldn’t turn away. He hoped against hope that it wasn’t what he thought it was.

The image flicked to life.

The men stood in silence before the detective whispered, “Holy shit.”

Wicker stood motionless a long time—until he felt hot tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away and stormed out of the little room. Mendoza had been taken outside and was sitting in the back of a patrol car. Wicker could see him. He was being interviewed by another detective.

The anger was like fuel. It energized him and gave him strength. He fought as hard as he could to turn away, to try to forget what he’d seen and go on with his life. But he knew that was impossible. The images were now a part of him.

He strode up to the patrol car and swung as hard as he could through the open window. His fist connected with Mendoza’s jaw, sending the man flying across the backseat of the car.

Hands grabbed Wicker. “Easy,” someone whispered in his ear. “Easy, brother. Easy.”

Wicker pulled away from them, the tears still running down his cheeks. He sat on the porch steps, and wept.

2

Sarah King stood in front of the large bookcase and stocked the top shelf. The Queen’s Landing was a small bookstore on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The store primarily made its money on the clothing and new age trinkets they sold, but the books were Sarah’s favorite part.

Growing up in the Amish community of Lancaster, books were in short supply among girls. From before her birth, she was expected to become a mother and nothing else. Reading was not considered a necessity.

She picked up a book she’d never seen before, and a flash of pain entered her mind. A man with a mustache and glasses. He kept a woman in a box under his bed and would bring her out only to rape her. Hurriedly, she put the book down. The back cover said it was about a man who kept a woman as a sex slave in his attic.

That wasn’t the image Sarah had seen. The images came to her like powerful beacons in a dark night, and she could tell the visions from imagination by the accompanying pain. Her head now throbbed, and she had to sit down in one of the recliners for the customers.

The image had not been of the author. The book was used. The man with the mustache was one of the prior owners of the book. Given his clothing, probably an owner from twenty or twenty-five years ago. She rose again, attempting to clear her head, and went back to the bookshelf. She lifted the book, slowly dropping the barriers she built in her mind to prevent such images from taking over her thoughts.

The man kept the woman in a wooden box like a coffin, only smaller. He brought her out to eat, to bathe, and to rape. Then she was promptly put back in the box. Sarah heard the woman weeping softly at night, the sound hardly a whisper outside the box.

The woman died—suffocated by the man one day when he went too far during a rape. He attempted to dump the body in a nearby canyon, and that was when Sarah saw the red and blue flashing lights of the police cruiser. She didn’t know what he was pulled over for but the officer was suspicious, searched the trunk, and discovered the body.

She saw the man, and she saw his house. The house was taken by the bank and all the belongings sold… including the books.

She dropped the book, her head pounding now. The lighting of the bookstore probably wasn’t helping her headache, so she went to the break room and turned off the lights.

Sitting at the table in the dark, she closed her eyes and focused on one of the meditation techniques she’d been studying the past few months. A single thought had to occupy her mind—a number or an image—something to divert her attention from the flood of impressions and sounds trying to force themselves in like an unwanted guest.

When she’d helped the FBI on a case, they’d called it her “gift.” Her father had called it the devil’s curse before banishing her from the Amish community. Sometimes, she didn’t know who was right.

After a few minutes, her mind had calmed and she regained control. Stepping back into the bookstore, she went to the food cart and bought a Diet Coke from the server there, a young woman named Kelly who was working her way through graduate school.

“You okay, hon?” she asked, retrieving the plastic bottle from a bin of ice.

“Just a headache.”

“Well, here.” She reached into her purse and brought out two tan tablets. “Eight hundred ibuprofen. Works like a charm with the caffeine.”

“Thanks.”

She took a sip of the drink before popping the pills in her mouth and washing them down. She exhaled and sat on Kelly’s stool. “How’s school going?”

“Not bad. Two more years left and then I’m outta here.”

“Where you gonna go?”

“I was thinking California.”

“I’ve always wanted to go there.”

Kelly looked at her. “You’ve never been?”

She shook her head. “The farthest I’ve gone out of state is Cape Cod.”

“Well, you’re welcome to come with me. We could be roomies.”

“Really?” she asked with a grin.

“Of course. We’ll lie around on the beach all day, I’ll pick up hot guys and you’ll spend time with your boyfriend whenever he comes out, you can finish school… it’ll be awesome.”

She looked down, imagining a life she would probably never have. If she relaxed, the visions broke through, just as they had with the book.

“I don’t have a boyfriend anymore,” she said.

Kelly stopped what she was doing. “I hadn’t heard that. What happened?”

“I was ready for something more serious and he wasn’t, I guess. I want to get married and have kids. I don’t want to run from one boyfriend to another.”

Kelly said, “Hm. I’m the opposite. Guys are so cute and dumb. Like little puppies. I love having a lot of them.”

Sarah grinned. “World wouldn’t be very interesting if people were the same, I guess.”

“You got some of that, too, don’t kid yourself. Good and bad can be in the same person. You just gotta bring out your bad side a little bit.”

“You think so?”

Kelly went back to whatever she was doing at the register. “I know it. Come out with us tomorrow.”

“I don’t know.”

“
Please
, what were you gonna do? Stay home and watch
Vampire Diaries
again? Come out with us.”

“I guess it would be fun.”

“Damn right it will. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Thanks, Kelly. Talking to you always cheers me up.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Sarah had another hour to go on her shift, and she finished stocking the shelves. The book about the woman hidden in the attic stuck out to her, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching, grabbed it by its edges, and threw it in a trash bin.

When she left the store, the air was cool. Night had fallen hours ago. She preferred evenings over morning shifts, and she saw a sliver of moon up in the sky. Her apartment wasn’t far from the bookstore, and she didn’t have a car. There was no need anymore. Her work, her yoga studio, and her apartment were within a twenty-minute walk of one another. Without a car, she could save money and not be forced to take a job she hated just to pay bills.

Sarah strolled with her hands in her pockets. The neighborhood, one colloquially called “Marmalade Square,” catered to the young, freshly out of school and thrown into life. At thirty-one, that wasn’t exactly her, but she never really got to experience much in her youth. As a child, she was under the thumb of the Amish community and her father. In her twenties, seemingly as a response, her mind was soaked in alcohol from sun up to sun down. It wasn’t until recently that she had become sober and finally found time to look inside herself.

The apartment building stank of cigarette smoke as she walked inside. Four stories of old brick and dirty glass, it gave the impression that it had seen several hundred lifetimes’ worth of heartache and pain.

Her apartment was on the second floor. She unlocked the door, and immediately Biggles ran out. The cat, a mix of white and black, sat on the hallway carpet and then rolled around on his back. She grinned to herself as she sat down with him.

“So how was your day?” she said, rubbing his belly. “Great, I bet. You got to be all by yourself and play, or eat… I bet you didn’t have a worry in the world, huh?”

The cat flipped over and then crawled into her lap. Sarah leaned against the wall and ran her fingers through his fur. She wasn’t sure where he’d lived before six months ago. She found him when he’d been sifting through trash in the alley near her apartment. He’d been so skinny she could see his ribs. He turned and hissed at her, swiping with his paw. A lifetime of abuse had clearly taught him to trust no one.

Every day for two weeks, she would come to the alley at the same time and bring him food and water. He ate with zest. It took the entire two weeks before he would let her touch him. Once he was comfortable around her and she could pick him up, she took him to the vet, had him de-wormed and bathed, given his shots, and then brought him to his new home. Now, he looked like a “before” picture of himself for some diet program for obese cats.

“We may have to put you on a diet, huh?” she said. The cat stretched, as though telling her
Just go ahead and try
, and Sarah said, “No, I think you’re perfect just the way you are.”

She waited in the hall with him for a long time—so long that she fell asleep. It wasn’t until a door opened down the hall and one of her neighbors stepped out that she woke. The man looked at her and smiled. She smiled back.

“Siesta, huh?”

“Just resting my eyes,” she said.

Biggles was lying next to her but immediately sat up on all fours. He eyed the man. The neighbor reached down to pet him, and the cat hissed.

“Sorry, he’s not completely tamed yet. Nervous around strangers.”

The neighbor shrugged. “We all should be, I guess. I’m Scott, by the way.”

“Sarah.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you around the building. You’re new here, right?”

“Six months.”

“Oh, I thought you were new for some reason.”

The cat slowly climbed onto her lap again, as though placing himself between Scott and her. “Yeah, I don’t get out much.”

“Well, you should,” he said with a grin. Then, for a moment, neither of them said anything, and an awkward silence fell. “So, I guess I’ll see ya around?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said.

“Cool.”

Sarah waited until the man left before she rose and went inside. Something about him seemed off, but maybe it only seemed that way because of Biggles’s reaction. Or maybe the excuse she used was actually correct and Biggles hissed at everyone but her.

Didn’t matter. She was so exhausted that Scott could’ve been Jack the Ripper, and she still would’ve gone to bed. She slipped off her shoes at the door and headed to the bedroom, Biggles still sitting by the door like a guard dog.